[Balmung] Server Issues, safety, and overcrowding

[Grimmel]

I'm sure I'm not the only one with concerns over this issue. As it stands it is extremely difficult for newer players to play with their friends by starting out on the same server as them.

It's impossible to do this on Balmung and there are several issues of why this cannot be made possible as well as sub issues on top of those issues.

People advertising Balmung as a place to endorse vulgar and explicit content is one of the major issues.

Just last week on Balmung we had an issue with an individual whose main reason for transferring to Balmung was to find and get involved in such lewd activites. I'm sure you all witnessed the shout chat in Ul'dah and what it ended up leading to.
This game was not intended for such activities to take place in. There are other games that allow this but FFXIV is not one of them.

There is a T rating yes, But T rating means for Teens and above. Last time I checked being a teenager included age groups of 13-17 which is the age of minors. Not just 18+. I see people advertising for events on our party finder detailing strip clubs and other lewd activities that involves parties requiring to be 18+ to participate. The problem here is you cannot enforce that properly. You cannot stop everyone at the door and ask for a scan of their ID. It is something out of your control and people should be respectful of this games rating and not turn it into their own take of a personal Final Fantasy Porno.

Balmung is a big server I get that, It's a popular place, but when people keep transferring to Balmung due to the above mentioned and the hopes of having a more populated server to play on you're actually killing the game as a whole. Why do you think there are so many servers in the first place? To spread out and ease tensions off any particular server so that the servers function normally and the data centers don't get overloaded. Right now there are a handful of dying servers because people are continuously coming to Balmung from less populated servers. But for what?
There is a lot of content new transfers are going to be locked out of for a very long time. Housing is an issue for our server and hunts are nearly impossible to do as there are enough people present at an S rank for to die in less than 30 seconds. A ranks are impossible, once they're announced their pulled by some impatient person who has zero care for anyone else other than themselves. Some of the most fun aspects of this game are excluding a majority of the servers populace due to over crowding.

And then I have characters on other servers, other data centers and they are severely under populated. Tons of housing available. Even the initial wards first introduced aren't all filled up yet.

Balmung is not healthy right now. There is a 1 minute window open after every maintenance to create a new character before it's all filled up by RMT bots. There is literally no "wait till the early hours to make a character" anymore for Balmung. None.

Dev's if you're reading this, something needs to be done.

[Medicine]

Megaservers, also if your complaining about the whole ERP situation know that nothing can solve that issue, That T rating is pointless because nobody can control what people do on an MMO.

[Grimmel]

Megaservers, also if your complaining about the whole ERP situation know that nothing can solve that issue, That T rating is pointless because nobody can control what people do on an MMO.

Actually it can be solved if people report it when they see it. There is a correct way to RP such themes and then there is the extremely very wrong way of doing it which I'm seeing a lot of on Balmung and I'm really tired of it.

For those that want to report it, it falls under harassment as it disrupts the gameplay of others who don't want to have to see it advertised for in their Party Finder.

[EorzeaHero69]

Chat isn't part of the esrb rating system, since it only focuses on story, themes, violence, etc.

[Rokke]

There is a 1 minute window open after every maintenance to create a new character before it's all filled up by RMT bots.

Its closer to 30 seconds, but even then its not impossible to get a character through. 4 of my characters made it through after server crashes or maintenance.

Realistically, what can the devs do? People like to bring up discontinuing incoming transfers while offering free outgoing transfers as a solution, though I wonder even if it were free how many people would actually go? I came to Balmung because it had a huge population. I'm not going back to a smaller server willingly lol

[SaitoHikari]

Realistically, what can the devs do? People like to bring up discontinuing incoming transfers while offering free outgoing transfers as a solution, though I wonder even if it were free how many people would actually go? I came to Balmung because it had a huge population. I'm not going back to a smaller server willingly lol

You'd be surprised. Communities change over time. There are probably a significant amount of people in Balmung that have been on the server for a very long time that don't enjoy what the server has turned into, but the main roadblock for them transferring out is the fact that there's a fee for doing so - and getting all of their friends to pay said fee is problematic, and quite frankly not happening.

Balmung has this awkward mythical status that is frankly toxic to the Aether data center as a whole, which is only further cemented by the fact that character creation is so limited. The way the staff is handling it so far is quite frankly poor. If it continues to exist as is, the server is going to continue draining the population of other servers. I imagine the last thing they'd want in the future is for new players to pick a server at random only to not run into much of anyone, and think that it is representative of the health of the game as a whole. Then if they do any research at all, they find out that 30-35% of Aether data center's community is concentrated in one data center that's nigh impossible to join without forking over an additional fee. Of course, people would argue that 'lol who doesn't do their research on what server to join?' Well, a lot of people in this very community don't even attempt to research how to actually play the game effectively, with people falling over themselves on the forum to justify their right to play poorly, so I wouldn't hold new players responsible for that either.

We already did see something like this happen on a smaller but far more easily measurable scale to the raiding community, due to how quickly it happened - as a result of Gordias, many raiders decided Gilgamesh would be the unofficial raiding server and mass transferred, outright killing the raiding community in many underpopulated servers, to the point where running Extreme content was outright impossible to organize in said servers. SE responded by making the failed Raid Finder, before coming up with the cross server PF. Gilgamesh is a highly populated server too, but it somehow manages to exist without the issues that Balmung has.

[Lexia]

You'd be surprised. Communities change over time. There are probably a significant amount of people in Balmung that have been on the server for a very long time that don't enjoy what the server has turned into, but the main roadblock for them transferring out is the fact that there's a fee for doing so - and getting all of their friends to pay said fee is problematic, and quite frankly not happening.

Well I was placed on Balmung in 2.0 from when played 1.0, I probably would of switch servers at the start but couldn't do to the can't transfer off a legacy to no legacy server. Now this late into the game I will most likely never transfer away from balmung as there too many restrictions. I would lose most my gil and house I have which is most likely one of the rarest things to have in this game (especially if you on balmung).

[ErikMynhier]

You'd be surprised. Communities change over time. There are probably a significant amount of people in Balmung that have been on the server for a very long time that don't enjoy what the server has turned into, but the main roadblock for them transferring out is the fact that there's a fee for doing so - and getting all of their friends to pay said fee is problematic, and quite frankly not happening.

Balmung has this awkward mythical status that is frankly toxic to the Aether data center as a whole, which is only further cemented by the fact that character creation is so limited. The way the staff is handling it so far is quite frankly poor. If it continues to exist as is, the server is going to continue draining the population of other servers. I imagine the last thing they'd want in the future is for new players to pick a server at random only to not run into much of anyone, and think that it is representative of the health of the game as a whole. Then if they do any research at all, they find out that 30-35% of Aether data center's community is concentrated in one data center that's nigh impossible to join without forking over an additional fee. Of course, people would argue that 'lol who doesn't do their research on what server to join?' Well, a lot of people in this very community don't even attempt to research how to actually play the game effectively, with people falling over themselves on the forum to justify their right to play poorly, so I wouldn't hold new players responsible for that either.

We already did see something like this happen on a smaller but far more easily measurable scale to the raiding community, due to how quickly it happened - as a result of Gordias, many raiders decided Gilgamesh would be the unofficial raiding server and mass transferred, outright killing the raiding community in many underpopulated servers, to the point where running Extreme content was outright impossible to organize in said servers. SE responded by making the failed Raid Finder, before coming up with the cross server PF. Gilgamesh is a highly populated server too, but it somehow manages to exist without the issues that Balmung has.

I have to say to this there are a lot of social problems on Balmung. I for one have experienced them myself in the form of people judging me based on my personal beliefs and worse by heresay. That said, like in my earlier post, literally "that's life in the big city [server]". That said I do agree that there needs to be some options because a paywall is a real thing and if the server that never sleeps isn't for you... well its your sub and you should be happy, even if you can't afford a transfer.

I think a good compromise to avoid abuse is a yearly free transfer. That way if you aren't liking where you are you can try another but it will limit RMT guys just hopping from server to server.

For myself I love Balmung despite its issues and would never leave.

[ToasterMan]

Separate servers really should be a thing of the past at this point

[Hyrist]

I have to say to this there are a lot of social problems on Balmung. I for one have experienced them myself in the form of people judging me based on my personal beliefs and worse by heresay. That said, like in my earlier post, literally "that's life in the big city [server]". That said I do agree that there needs to be some options because a paywall is a real thing and if the server that never sleeps isn't for you... well its your sub and you should be happy, even if you can't afford a transfer.

I think a good compromise to avoid abuse is a yearly free transfer. That way if you aren't liking where you are you can try another but it will limit RMT guys just hopping from server to server.

For myself I love Balmung despite its issues and would never leave.

I'm going to have to check the idea that Balmung is especially bad when it comes to social problems. Truth of the matter is, drama is just drama and it occurs everywhere. The 'social problems' are byproducts of having a high, condense population with a unifying concept, such as Roleplaying or Raiding, or PvP. Interpersonal dramas often spill out due to people having interlocking social circles and a natural aversion to encountering more problems.

The fact that Balmung 'seems to' have social issues is, honestly, it is a more social server than most - which I think you and I both agree is a net positive. I think trying to point out social issues on Balmung as an isolated problem is erroneous in comparison to addressing online social problems as a broader scope. That's like saying the forums here are hostile without noticing that pretty much every official gaming forum in an MMO has hostility issues. It's a symptom of a larger problem, and in order to properly address the symptom, we have to acknowledge and work with the larger issues.